Frozen on Broadway Nominated For Three Tony Awards

Frozen on Broadway is not only the latest of Disney animated films adapted for the stage but it’s also the latest to receive multiple Tony Award nominations.

Frozen on Broadway has received a total of three Tony Award nominations in the categories of Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Jennifer Lee), and Best Original Score (Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez).

The musical only debuted a short time ago on March 22, 2018 at the St. James Theatre. The stage production sticks pretty close to the story established in the original movie of two royal sisters, Anna and Elsa, who grow up isolated from one another due to Elsa’s ice powers that she can’t quite control. When Elsa turns 21, it’s time for her to be crowned Queen of Arendelle but the coronation festivities take a turn when Elsa’s powers run amok and freeze the entire kingdom in an eternal winter. After Elsa flees the kingdom out of fear and shame, it’s then up to Anna to go search for her sister and try to figure out how to break the spell.

The musical’s plot remains faithful to the source material but features twice as many songs as the film. Husband and wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez were the original songwriters for the film and were the natural choice to expand the Frozen songbook. The pair already won an Academy Award for the film’s showstopping number “Let It Go” and Robert Lopez has already had previous luck in the Tony’s Best Original Score category with previous wins for Avenue Q and Book of Mormon.

Jennifer Lee served on the original film as screenwriter and co-directed the film alongside Chris Buck. She has the distinction of being the first female director of a Disney Animation Studios film and is the first female director of a film to earn $1 billion in box office earnings. Her most recent projects included story credit on Zootopia and writing the screenplay for A Wrinkle In Time.

The competition in the Best Musical category is stiff, especially considering that both Mean Girls and Spongebob Squarepants are both tied for most nominations this year with 11 noms a piece. While six out of the eight total Disney Broadway musicals have garnered nods in this category, only one has taken home the award for Best Musical and that was twenty years ago in 1998 when The Lion King dominated the Tonys that year.

The 72nd Annual Tony Awards will take place on June 10, 2018 and will broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City on CBS at 8/7c.